★★★★
I normally don’t think about the title of stand-up shows much. Often acts land on a funny pun (usually involving their names – what egos!) or have some sensationalist, far-too-long annoying one, but beyond that, it’s just to get the audience in, surely?
Harriet Dyer’s ‘Skin’, is as perfect a word for this hour of stand-up as anything could be. It’s intimate, it’s bare – Dyer doesn’t go for dressing things up, whether in her chaotic delivery or pitch-perfect streams of consciousness. She doesn’t rely on gimmicks, props, endless music or video cues. It’s her, on a stage, with a mic (not even a chair as it costs a £1 a show to rent!!!) letting out tidal waves of talent, insight and hilarity, that it’s hard to catch a breath. She’s a force of nature that paints vivid stories of her Cornish adolescence; full of characters including Chickin’ Lickin’, Monsieur Squid and Kate Bush (not that one).
The element of personal disclosure in stand-up can sometimes feel cringey, but Dyer reveals a serious narrative about drug-taking, and those lost to addiction. Showing difficult subject matter such as domestic violence and being homeless in a humanising light that’s usually the butt of sick jokes, but Dyer never demeans her subject matter.
It’s in Dyer’s ability to ‘say everything that she thinks’, to be totally authentic and the casual mention of ‘I had a lot mental health problems’ as punctuation between stories that captures a performer with significant power. It never feels jumbled or disconnected, but the work of a mesmerising and gifted storyteller who can weave asides about her hearing aids picking up rustling sweets, into an already many-layered narrative.
Dyer’s so great that she doesn’t really need to rely on the trappings of stand-up convention; the call-backs are great as are the toppers and one-liners, but they feel almost out of place when, overall, Dyer’s set already feels complete.
She concludes her hour with a thank you and an almost apology for not being famous, but it’s Dyer’s artfulness in being the antithesis of carbon copy, paint-by-numbers stand-up, that makes her a must-see and a masterclass in originality.
Harriet Dyer: Skin is on at the Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose – Coorie till the 24th August.
